ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the main features of Italian society is, at least to some extent and the crisis at new afflicting it, and to relate that crisis to its origins. Confronted with such a situation of uneven development the value-system of underdevelopment fails to transform itself consistently or to new a united front throughout the country. Some say, perhaps rightly, that the coming of the welfare state has robbed the Italians of their happiness. More generally, in following the development of Italy, people have seen the upheavals that transformed it economically, culturally, socially and politically, so that the whole power-system was changed. In the Italian case, too, people have to ask whether it was a good thing to pay such a high price for such slight advantages as development has brought in the shape of higher standards of living.
